The Ward of King Canute | Page 7

life out-of-doors had given to her skin a tone of warm brown, which, in a land that expected women to be lily-fair, was like a mask added to her disguise. The blackness of her hair was equally unconnected with Northern dreams of beautiful maidens. "Dark-haired women, like slaves, black and bad," was the proverb of the Danish camps. Some fair-tressed ancestor back in the past must have qualified his blood from the veins of an Irish captive; in no other way could one account for those locks, and for her eyes that were of the grayish blue of iris petals.
The eyes were a little staring this morning, as though still stretched wide with the horror of the things they had looked upon; and all the glowing red blood had ebbed away from the brown cheeks.
She said in a low voice, "My father... Fridtjof..." then stopped to draw a long hard breath through her set teeth.
For the moment Sister Wynfreda was not a nun but a woman,--a woman with a great yearning tenderness that might have been a beautiful mother-love. She ran to the girl and caught her tremblingly by the hands, feeling up her arms to her shoulders and about her face, as if to make sure that she was really unharmed.
"Praise the Lord that you are delivered whole to me!" she breathed. "Gram told us--that they had taken you."
Gazing at her out of horror-filled eyes, Randalin stood quite still in her embrace. Her story came from her in jerks, and each fragment seemed to leave her breathless, though she spoke slowly.
"I broke away," she said. "They stood around me in a ring. Norman Leofwinesson said he would carry me before a priest and marry me, so that Avalcomb might be his lawfully, whichever king got the victory. I said by no means would I wed him; sooner would I slay him. All thought that a great jest and laughed. While they were shouting I slipped between them and got up the stairs into a chamber, where I bolted the door and would not open to them, though they pounded their fists sore and cursed at me. After a while the pounding became an exertion to them, and one began to talk about the mead that was waiting below. And after that they whispered together for a space. At last they began to laugh and jeer, and called to me that they would go down and drink my wedding toast before they broke in the door and fetched me; and then they betook themselves to feasting."
Sister Wynfreda bent her head to murmur a prayer: "God forgive me if I have lacked charity in my judgment on the Pagans! If they who have seen the light can do such deeds, what can be expected of those who yet labor under the curse of darkness?"
"I do not understand you," Randalin said wearily, sinking on the grass and passing her hands over her strained eyes. "When a man looks with eyes of longing upon another man's property, it is to be expected that he will do as much evil as luck allows him. Though he has got Baddeby, Norman was covetous of Avalcomb. When his lord, Edric Jarl, was still King Edmund's man, he twice beset the castle, and my father twice held it against him. And his greed was such that he could not stay away even after Edric had become the man of Canute."
It was the nun's turn for bewilderment. "The man of Canute? Edric of Mercia, who is married to the King's sister? It cannot be that you know what you say!"
"Certainly I know what I say," the girl returned a little impatiently. "All English lords are fraudulent; men can see that by the state of the country. Though he be thrice kinsman to the English King, Edric Jarl has joined the host of Canute of Denmark; and all his men have followed him. But even that agreement could not hold Norman back from Avalcomb. He lay hidden near the gate till he saw my father come, in the dusk, from hunting, when he fell upon him and slew him, and forced an entrance--the nithing! When he had five-and-fifty men and my father but twelve!"
She paused, with set lips and head flung high. The nun got down stiffly beside her and laid a gentle hand upon her knee.
"Think not of it, my daughter," she urged. "Think of your present need and of what it behooves us to do. Tell me how you escaped from the chamber, and why you wear these clothes."
"They were Fridtjof's." She spoke his name very softly. "I found them hanging on the chamber wall. In the night the men began to entertain themselves with singing, and it could be heard that they were getting drunk. It